New York’s highest court has removed a Whitehall Town and Village Court judge seven years after he pointed a gun at a Black man in court.
One major component that impacted his removal from the bench was that he lacked remorse for his actions.
Another factor was that he bragged to his colleagues about pulling out his loaded, semi-automatic handgun on a “large Black man” while sitting on the bench.
The State Commission on Judicial Conduct stated the incident happened in late 2015 or early 2016. The body, after reviewing the facts of the incident, moved to have Justice Robert J. Putorti, 53, removed. The judge’s legal team sought an appeal of that decision.
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The commission says that the judge exaggerated the man’s race and size when talking about the incident to his peers. According to Putorti, he aimed the firearm at the man because he moved too close, too fast toward the bench.
Putorti initially described the defendant to a colleague as being 6 feet 9 and “built like a football player.” However, the man was substantially smaller, standing at 6 feet and weighing in at only 165 pounds. Later, the judge would admit that the man was not as menacing as he originally claimed.
The New York State Court of Appeals conducted a review and on Thursday, Oct. 19, decided to uphold the decision made by the commission’s decision to remove Putorti for his inappropriate conduct during a 2015 court hearing, writing, “the record amply supports the conclusion that petitioner’s misconduct ‘transcends poor judgment’ and warrants removal.”
The judge served the Whitehall town and village community for eight years before losing his job.
“It is indefensible and inimical to the role of a judge to brandish a loaded weapon in court, without provocation or justification, then brag about it repeatedly with irrelevant racial remarks,” said Robert H. Tembeckjian, administrator for the state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct, according to The Associated Press.
“The Court’s ruling today makes clear that there is no place on the bench for one who behaves this way,” Tembeckjian added.
The court said the judge’s description of the litigant “exploited a classic and common racist trope that Black men are inherently threatening or dangerous, exhibiting bias or, at least, implicit bias.”
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This is something that Putorti denies. He said when he described the man, it was “merely to describe him” to others. He also said he can see how his behavior “may have created the appearance of racial bias,” according to the Times Union.
Putorti argued that he had been a legal gun owner since 2003 and that in 2013, he was told at a judge training course that the law said he could carry his firearm on the bench.
In addition to his offense against the defendant in court, during the time of the investigation into his gun issue, Putorti violated fundraising rules by attending events to benefit the Elks Lodge.
The court said that while the fundraising violation did not warrant him being removed, the fact that he had hosted it while under a judicial probe demonstrated “an unwillingness or inability to abide by the Rules of Judicial Conduct.”
